Proof the previous post is true.

 

 Talking to my Mom while she was in New York.

Some animal sounds.

 

 Most of her signs.

Learning to feed herself.

Very proud of herself.

We had an incident with my makeup.

Mommy's favorite little helper.

Trying out her new stroller with her baby.

Baby boy about 2 months ago.

Baby boy about a month ago.

Update

It has been quite some time and a lot has been going on.

I'm sure anyone reading this already knows that Lucy is getting a little brother in January. As far as the date goes that is so far unknown. For some reason they are having a hard time telling me from the ultrasounds. I can tell you it's sometime between Jan. 3rd-24th. Yes I realize that's a difference of 3 weeks. Whenever anyone asks my due date I just say January because I don't even know if it's the beginning, middle or end. Kind of obnoxious. I do have another ultrasound scheduled a week from Tuesday on the 4th and they are hoping to finally give me a date. This pregnancy has been a little different from Lucy. I've had a lot more back pain and just general stiffness all over. Depending on my due date I feel like I have a lot more movement than I did with Lucy at this point. Well that's only if I'm due at the end of the month. If I'm due at the beginning then I would say the movement is about the same. This whole pregnancy just kind of seems unreal because I don't even know how far along I am. Hopefully the mystery will be solved next week. We also got a 2nd crib for this little man and double stroller. I'm excited to use them both. He's going to be in our room because I don't want him to disrupt Lucy at night. Hopefully when we move in April he'll sleep decent and they can be in the same room then.

Lucy is just chugging along and putting up with me all day every day. We usually keep pretty busy. My pregnancy has been keeping me pretty stiff like I said before so we have been going on about hour long walks every morning to keep me moving and this little boy happy. Lucy enjoys it pretty well too because we have scouted out where all the neighborhood animals are so we will go find them. The weather has been so great lately too. Finally not too hot so we have been spending several hours outside everyday just hanging out on the playground outside and making friends with the other kids. She's usually the youngest out there that can walk but she keeps up pretty well. She just last week figured out how to go down the slide on her bum all by herself so that has been pretty fun for her. She is growing so fast and learning so much all the time. She's not really talking yet so we started doing signs with her and it is amazing how fast she picks them up. I think she's just so excited to be able to communicate better. So far the words she knows are please, thank you, eat, more, milk, all done and if you say "we're going to say a pray" she will fold her arms. Sometimes you don't even have to say it she just knows when we are going to pray and will fold her arms. Like when you put her in her high chair or when Kyle and I take her into her room at bed time as soon as we sit down she folds her arms for the family prayer. Goodness I love that girl. She has a hard time with saying please though. She great at saying it without even being prompted like when she wants a bite of something or when she hands me a book and will automatically sign please. The trouble comes because she doesn't quite get that saying please won't get you anything you want. Like when I'm on the phone and she wants to talk so she says please over and over but still doesn't get the phone. At least she says it I guess.  Her favorite thing right now is giving kisses. She's finally done with the "baby kisses" and actually smacks her lips instead of the wonderful open mouth usually with tongue kisses. Sometimes I'll be sitting on the couch or doing something and she just walks over to me with her lips puckered to get me a kiss without me asking for one. Or at night time I will lay her in bed and sing her a song then when I go to leave I'll say I love you and she will lift her head up and blow me a kiss then drift off to bed. Those two moments are probably the best moments a Mom has. She also loves giving her baby doll kisses and the pictures of animals in her books. Speaking of animals she's also working on her animal sounds. Right now she can do a dog, elephant and monkey. The elephant is my favorite because she basically just blows a high pitched raspberry and lifts her arm in the air. Such a clever little bug. She has her 15 month appt coming up on the 10th so I'm excited like always to see her stats. I know that she weighs 19 lbs but I want to see what percentile she's in. Hopefully she's finally broken the 5th percentile barrier! Well I doubt she has but I'm still curious.

Kyle is plugging along as well. He's been back in school for a month now and it seems to be going pretty well. Working hard like always. He's assigned to the Men's Volleyball team this semester and enjoys it ok. It's pretty laid back because the sport isn't in season so he doesn't have to worry about too many injuries because they aren't really practicing to hard or have any games that he has to get ready for and go to. He's still working in the Library as a janitor every night from 8pm to midnight. He is usually home by about 6 and then has to leave for work a couple hours later. At least we get to have dinner with him everyday. Poor guy is never home but he is making it possible for me to be home with Lucy and I sure do love him for it. At least there's an end in sight. He graduates in April and we will be moving to Portland and it couldn't come soon enough.

We don't have any plans made as of yet for going home and seeing family before the baby is born but hopefully that will happen. The goal is Thanksgiving since Christmas is not an option being so close to my due date. After he comes it is pretty unlikely that we will make it before we move back. I just have to meet my sweet little niece Kaeley before she is 7 months old!

The end.

Far too much.

So much has gone on since I've written on here and the thought of posting it all is kind of overwhelming. I guess I'll do my best! We are in Portland now and have been so for over a month. It has been an eventful month indeed. We have had a lot of fun spending time with family and everything. It's also been such a blessing to have such willing babysitters on demand. We have definitely been taking advantage of it too! Lucy is officially weaned too which is wonderful because she has gotten to have 2 sleepovers at my mom's house. One of those nights we got to go camping which would have been a disaster with her since she is refusing to walk. She can definitely walk she just chooses not to. I wouldn't really care other than the fact that I know how much she would love to be running around everywhere with her cousins. She will randomly stand up completely on her own and walk across the room like it's no big deal but won't use it as her main form of transportation. She's been able to take steps on her own for about 6 weeks now. Oh well she'll figure it out soon enough.

Anyways the biggest event of the last month was probably Lucy's birthday! I can't believe this year has gone by already. We celebrated by taking a family trip to the beach. The weather was absolutely amazing! I've never had that great of weather on the Oregon Coast. It's a very rare treat! I dressed Lucy warm because it was supposed to be cold and overcast so when we got there I just had to strip her to her diaper. We had a lot of fun together as a family. After the beach we went back to my mom's for some pizza and presents from her. The next day was Saturday and we had a birthday party for my side of the family. The party went really well minus Lucy's very large freak out when we tried to do the cake. I don't know what's wrong with my child but she does not like cake whatsoever. She loves ice cream though. The whole thing was a disaster but it all calmed. The next day we had the party for Kyle's side. She still refused to eat the cake but it was not accompanied with ridiculous amounts of screaming and tantrums. All in all her Birthday weekend was a huge success. She got away with a crazy amount of loot from the ones who love her most. Thank you to everyone who helped out and came to celebrate with us!

That's all I got for now and I'm too lazy to upload pictures so a picture post will shortly follow sometime when I feel like it.

Countdown

I'm sitting here watching So You Think You Can Dance thinking about how much more I should be doing so I might as well be blogging too right? Today marks a very special day, Kyle is finished with school and in about 3 hours he will finish his last work shift of the summer. Now the countdown begins until Monday night when we head home to Portland for the summer. Actually about his time on Monday Lucy and I will be taking off in an airplane and Kyle and Joe will be on their way driving. Words cannot describe how excited we are to finally get home. It may not be a permanent move but I'll take 2 months for now and the permanent move next April. I have so much to do it's a little stressful but boy is it worth it. I'm so excited to be around our families but I think I'm the most excited probably for Lucy to get to spend the next 2 months with all her cousins. The poor girl is stuck with me all day everyday and boy does she deserve to be around some kids for a while. My to-do list is beyond insane. It's a 2 pages front and back. The first page I have each room written down and the list of tasks that need to be accomplished in said room. You have no idea how much cleaning needs to be done for a 2 month vacation in a house that is already pretty clean all the time. And about 80% of it is stuff that I have to wait to do until after I put Lucy to bed because it's about impossible otherwise. The back is just all the random stuff like clean the car out, get the oil changed, blah blah blah. Plus another page full of stuff that I cannot forget to bring. I've been working on that one for a while because random stuff just pops into my head all the time. Tomorrow we get to drive up to Kyle's uncles house in Layton to hang out and pick up his cousin Joe. He's going to be driving back with Kyle so Lucy and I can fly. I'm so grateful for that because taking a 1 year old on a 12 hour car ride does not sound like my cup of tea. I'm kind of sad though because Kyle and I have taken that drive together so many times it's become a special thing for us. So many memories of talking for hours, rocking out to music, eating ridiculous junk food and all the inside jokes of places we've stopped along the way. Him and Joe will have a lot of fun though. Joe's leaving on his mission soon so it will be good for him and Kyle to have some one on one time since they're so close and never get to see each other. In other news my little Lucy is walking. I can't believe it. She'll be 1 here in 3 short weeks. I'm sure she will have a post devoted to her 1 year accomplishments and what not soon enough so I won't go into too much detail. She's just growing up way too fast. Anyways my show is almost over so it's time to end this rambling and get to work. See you all in Portland!

The last month

Last month the Caudle clan got to go to Portland for Easter. Lucy and I went home before Kyle started his finals so he could have some quiet around the house to study and stuff. We both very much agree that it's impossible for either of us to get anything done when the other one is home. It's just so much more fun to hang out with each other or play with Lucy than it is to do grown up stuff. Anyways I was home for about 5 days before Kyle joined us. My Kyle-less time was mostly spent with my family. Lucy got to spend some quality time with Grandma Lori and Uncle Nicky which she so much adored. We also discovered that her stranger anxiety has pretty much developed into facial hair anxiety. Weird I know. My dad has grown a goatee since the last time we were home and she was terrified of it. Anytime she was around him she would not take her eyes off of it. It was kind of funny actually. But since the whole reason we decided to go home was because Kyle's brother Don is getting deployed and that would be the last time we see him until next spring when Kyle got there it was all his family all the time. It was during Easter weekend so we had fun with an Easter egg hunt, family dinners, church and lots of games (and of course Blazer games.) Also thanks to my wonderful sister in law Vivienne we started a hopefully annual family Easter program. Being home makes us both so excited for next month to be able to be in Portland for the whole summer. I miss both of our families like crazy all the time and I wish so much that Lucy could be around her cousins more. Only a year left I guess then we'll be back. At least Lucy won't even be 2 yet. It's all for the best though! I just have to keep telling myself that this is where we need to be right now and we'll see where life takes us later on. For now I'll be counting down the days until we go home again in June!

I also celebrated my 22nd birthday on the 28th. It was pretty low key which is fine with me. Kyle let me sleep in and got up with Lucy and made me breakfast. Then for Lunch we went out to eat to a steak place and it was delicious. Kyle unfortunately had to work from 3-1030 so it was just me and my Lu for the rest of the day. I'm not complaining though she's pretty good company. It sure beat my last 2 birthdays though. Two years ago Kyle had just gotten home from his mission so we hadn't been together for my birthday in a long time. I took the day off of work and we planned a fun day to just spend together and he ended up with food poisoning all day long. It was a blast. Then last year I was so pregnant and emotional. I had just developed my awful pregnancy rash and I was miserably itching from head to toe. I had a doctor appt that day and I was looking forward to it all week because I thought that they were going to help me. So I go in and almost break down crying telling the midwife about how misserable I am and she totally didn't believe me. She just said I don't think it's what you think (which it totally was) and she just said lets see you in a week or so and see how you're doing. That alone ruined my day because I knew I was going to be miserable for the next week before she believed me. I sat on the couch crying and watching tv the rest of the day. By the way when I went in the next week she still didn't believe me and set me up with a dermatologist who ended up doing a biopsy and we confirmed I was right the whole time. Anyways! To make a long story longer this year was much better. I keep thinking to myself that I got engaged at 19, married at 20, first baby at 21 what's in store for 22???

Lucy is now 10 months old and learning something new everyday. Her favorite thing to do right now is dancing. Anytime she hears anything with any sort of a beat she's dancing to it. Even hymns at church. We found these toy maracas yesterday and now she loves to shake those while she's dancing. She's also getting really close to walking. She's cruising all around the furniture, pushes things by walking and can walk holding only one of my hands. We'll see when she decides to do it on her own. We also rearranged our living room today for the probably 6th time in the last 3 months trying to keep up with her every growing urge to get into anything possible.

Kyle has started spring term and it's so relaxed and wonderful. He only has 2 classes. He is working a lot more too which is also wonderful. The weather has been so nice lately that Lucy and I have been taking jogs down to campus twice a day to bring him lunch and dinner. So we get to see him and I get my exercise in! His work is also so relaxed that we end up just hanging out with him for like an hour and Lu just gets to crawl around in the classrooms he cleans. He's also on inter-mural softball and ultimate frisbee teams and we have gotten to go to some of his day time games which has been fun.

Well that's pretty much our life right now!

9 Months

Yes you read it right, Lucy is already 9 months! I can't believe it. She has been out of the belly for as long as she was in it. I'm happy to say that I have lost all the baby weight (which was a lot more then it should have been) plus some. That's a huge relief. Hopefully I will keep it going! But it has been an amazing 9 months for sure. I just love that little girl so much. There's never a dull moment because she definitely has her dad's energy and is very busy. And always happy which she gets from Kyle too. Here are her 9 month stats:

Weight: 15.08 lbs-2.59 %
Height: 25.5 in- 3%

She is about as small as they come. The doctor said it's fine though which is good to hear. She's still growing but she is just a lot smaller. He did say that she's old enough to have a little whole milk which will hopefully help her put on some poundage. We will see. I already feed more then I think she wants. She eats about 7+ oz of baby food per meal, plus lots of snacks like cheerios and graham crackers and I nurse her 4 times a day. She doesn't usually have an off switch when she's eating so she'll eat as much as I feed her. She has several times eaten so much that she throws some up afterwards (TMI I know). Not sure how to make her chunk up if she's already eating that much! I guess we'll see what happens. I think part of the reason she's so small is not only because it's in her genes but she is so busy like a said before. The only time she sits still is to eat and even then she's about as busy as her high chair will allow. Hopefully she keeps this same metabolism her whole life and she will be one happy girl!

Here are some of her developmental things she has going on since my last update at 6 months.
She can now:

Crawl (started 7.5 months)
Stand and walk using furniture (started 8 months)
Stand on her own, well she has a couple times for about 2 seconds before falling over.
She has 1 tooth
Clap
Wave
Blow kisses
Say: Da-da, Ma-ma and bye bye
Eat finger foods
Turn off the light switch
Play peek-a-boo
Sleep through the night!
Use a sippy cup
Develop stranger anxiety

There's a million other little things but it's hard to think of all at once.

Something else she has also developed is aggressiveness. She doesn't have a bad temper or anything she just plays too rough. I think it has a lot to do with never really being around other kids and mostly just adults. When she's around other kids she tries to stand on them, grab their faces, pull their hair and take their toys or food. Hopefully it will get better this summer when she's around her cousins and bigger kids that will fight back.

She's very independent. As long as I'm in the same room as her and she can see me she will play with her toys by herself most of the day and be happy. That makes it so nice when I need to get stuff done around the house. I do still play with her though just because I love it. It's more for me then her I guess.

She's testing her boundaries constantly. She knows what "no" means but she likes to pretend she doesn't. She knows exactly what she can't get into and where she can't go. If she does try to do those things she'll slowly crawl over to it and keep looking back at me to see if I'm watching. Such a little stinker. Or if I'm doing something and she wants me to pick her up she'll cry at my feet for a little until she realizes that I can't pick her up then she'll immediately go get into something she knows that she shouldn't. Like I said before, never a dull moment.

Well that's all I can think of for now. I'm so excited to go home next week! I will leave you with a few pictures to reward you for making it through this whole post.

Trying to get the horses

Happy girl in the diaper box

Her first tooth, and cut on her nose from trying to stand on the movie shelf and falling

Fell asleep holding onto the crib

Proud wife

Pretty much every post on here is about Lucy so I just wanted to take a minute and brag about my wonderful husband. He is getting so burnt out of school and is soooooo ready for summer. With school, clinical and work he is pretty much gone from 8:30am- 12am everyday with about an hour break. He just keeps chugging along though. He works so hard so that I can stay at home with Lucy instead of working. I love him so much for that. I know that it really upsets him that he's away from Lucy so much but come the weekend he is all over that little girl. They are two peas in a pod. I love to just sit on the couch and watch them play. She adores him and he's pretty fond of her as well. I couldn't ask for a better husband and father. A couple things that recently happened that inspired me to write this were some accomplishments that he has had lately. If you know Kyle you know that he's not shy about talking himself up about pretty much anything. But what you may not know is that when he is actually really good at something he is about as humble as it gets. I have to constantly tell him over and over that he should be proud of himself for certain things but he doesn't usually believe me. I'm sure it comes from being raised in a super competitive home with 5 boys. Anyways he has been participating on the ward basketball team over the last couple months. A couple weeks ago our ward won the stake tournament. I could not have been prouder watching his games and seeing him do so well. Of course after every game I would tell him how good he did but he would just shake it off and say that he could have done better. Well after the last game we had at least 4 or 5 different people tell him that he was the tournament MVP and that he did amazing. At one point in a game the whole team was chanting "Kyle Caudle" because he was knocking down 3's left and right. I can't wait to watch him again next year! Then a few days later we found out what his new clinical assignment was for the fall semester. He really wanted to work with the basketball team but he got assigned to men's volleyball. He was kind of bummed but he later found out that the head athletic trainer for volleyball personally requested Kyle to work with them because he really liked Kyle. Again I was so proud and he didn't really think anything of it. He said that he hasn't really talked to the guy all that much but he must have made some sort of good impression. This is out of 80+ students and he requested my superstar of a husband! So that's what Kyle is up to lately. Sorry if you didn't really care but I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm his #1 fan :)

The 44th ward championship basketball team!